As digital photography and the digitization of old photographs become more and more prevalent, the number of digital images that are stored and archived will increase dramatically. Whether the digital images are stored locally on a user's PC or uploaded and stored on a Web photo-hosting site, the number of images will make it increasingly difficult for a user to find desired images.
To alleviate this problem, PC applications are available today that allow a user to categorize images. PhotoSee Pro™, by ACD Systems, for example, is an image management program that includes photo viewing functionality and a photo database for storing and retrieving thumbnail images from a photo CD. The program allows a user to browse their entire photo collection without swapping photo CDs. The program creates a thumbnail image for each photo found on the CD and allows the user to enter properties, such as caption, date, photographer, description, and keywords, for each thumbnail image. The user may then search the entire photo collection by entering desired properties.
Although programs such as PhotoSee Pro, and image database programs in general, allow the categorization of images using multiple categories, these programs have a major drawback. The problem is that in order to categorize the images, the user must retype the category information for each image. When categorizing a photo CD having a large amount of images, manually entering category information for each image is extremely tedious and time-consuming for the user. The problem is even worse for users who have a large collection of photo CDs or scanned images that they wish to electronically archive.
What is needed is a more efficient method for categorizing digital images. The present invention addresses such a need.